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Momenta Lives Up To Its Name New York
Americas Society 680 Park Avenue
10/07/2026 - October 8, 2026
Momenta Festival XI “The French Connection”: Julián Carrillo: String Quartet #9; Gabriel Fauré: Piano Quintet #2, Op. 115 Matthew Greenbaum: In Transit (World Premiere, written for Momenta)
Momenta Quartet: Emilie-Anne Gendron, Alex Shiozaki (Violins); Stephanie Griffen (Viola); Michael Haas (Cello); Steven Haas (Guest artist Pianist)
"Microtonal harmony can make chords more pure and consonant, countering the common perception that it only produces dissonance."
Harry Partch
”To express that which is in you in sincerity, in the clearest and most perfect manner, would seem to me the ultimate goal in art.”
Gabriel Fauré
Momenta Quartet(©John Gurrin)
The Momenta Quartet lived up to its name last night. For the first of two nights in their eleventh Momenta Festival, they plunged through the micro-temporal spaces of Matthew Greenbaum’s In Transit, filled those quantum spaces with microtonal sounds in Julián Carrillo’s 9th Quartet and finally landed on the earth with Gabriel Fauré’s Quintet.
With a customary New York audience, one would expect a few walkouts with the usual sotto voce grumbles. Not here in the America’s Society auditorium. No, the Momenta Quartet has a specialized fan-base (I was going to say “elite”, but that snobbery is inappropriate.)They wanted the unusual and Momenta offered it.
Not that they–-or I–-caught the opening notes of Mr. Greenbaum’s quintet. As the ensemble tuned up, with pianist Steven Beck, the aleatory fifth and plunks segued into the whispering fifths and plunks of the composition itself.
Was this a reversion to tone-row Webernian emptiness? No. That first movement had actual themes poking through the woodwork. In fact, the composer had held us in his hands through tantalizing nuances of sounds.
In fact, each of the six movements had a distinct personality, personifying Mr Greenbaum’s pictorial names: Barreling forward, Secretive Singing, Distant Still…. And the differences were each magnetic, each set of notes like those imaginary atoms about which we were taught.
In fact, the composer describes his music as “Multi-dimensional sound-space. That’s probably accurate. But I was fortunate in reading this after the fascinating performance.
M. Greenbaum/J.Carillo(©American Composers Alliance/Instagram-Obscure Composers)
Mr. Beck took a break, but Mr. Carillo’s Ninth Quartet filled in the notational off-kilter sounds. Gustav Mahler’s direction for a violin retuning in the Fourth Symphony, was for novelty. Mr Carillo imagined for a work for one-hundred microtones!!
Here, the quarter-tones were sufficient.
No wonder. His countrymen Chavez and Revultas had Spanish heritages. Cariillo came from Native Indian roots., And while his music has the complexity of German studies, one feels these sounds were hardly derivative.
All except the Lentemente. Had Beethoven dreamt of an ideal Late String Quartet Adagio, he would have dreamed of Mr Carillo’s meditation and moods with tone clusters of Beethovesque religiosity.
Momenta has a special interest in Carillo. They “discovered” him many years ago, and will record every Carillo quartet for Naxos next year.
After the intermission, pianist Beck and the Momenta returned for Fauré’s Second Piano Quintet. I confess respect but no love for the composer’s chamber music. (In fact, I confine myself to his Requiem and Pelleas. Mea Culpa.)
The Momenta tackled it with sheer love. And liquid fluidity And a dazzling scherzo set of figurations. For one with a limited feeling for Fauré, they made all four movements fly by, not with quantum, spaces, not with microtonal clusters, but simply with well-constructed diaphanous textures.
Harry Rolnick
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